British Council collaborates with UCL Institute of Education on a new online course to develop the skills of teachers
The British Council and UCL Institute of Education, UK, have developed a free online course for teachers wanting to explore new ways of developing their skills and knowledge.
Becoming a Better Teacher: Exploring Professional Development is a six-week course starting on 24 April 2017.
This massive open online course (MOOC) available via the FutureLearn platform has been specifically designed for the needs of teachers in India, particularly those teaching in English or who teach English as a subject. However, it is also relevant for teachers from around the world and offers an excellent opportunity for teachers to collaborate with an international community of educators.
This online course is broken into simple steps and will help teachers to develop their reflective skills and improve their practice in the classroom. It includes short video interviews with experienced teachers and activities, discussions and quizzes.
Participants will be guided through the course by British Council and UCL Institute of Education tutors, participating in discussions, sharing their experiences and opinions with other English language teachers from across India and around the world.
‘We’re absolutely delighted to be launching our first free, online course designed to help teachers in India continue their professional development. We’re bringing the best of UK expertise through our partner UCL Institute of Education together with our decade of experience working with teachers in India to provide a deep learning experience for thousands across the country who may not otherwise have access to this type of content. We’re using the FutureLearn platform which is unique in the social approach that it takes to online learning courses – we firmly believe that by leveraging digital solutions with high quality content we can facilitate a positive change in teachers – both from India and around the world – working together to improve their teaching and the learning outcomes for their students.’ Alan Gemmell – Director India, British Council.
About the British Council
The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We create friendly knowledge and understanding between the people of the UK and other countries. Using the UK’s cultural resources we make a positive contribution to the countries we work with – changing lives by creating opportunities, building connections and engendering trust.
We work with over 100 countries across the world in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society. Each year we reach over 20 million people face-to-face and more than 500 million people online, via broadcasts and publications.
Founded in 1934, we are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter and a UK public body. The majority of our income is raised delivering a range of projects and contracts in English teaching and examinations, education and development contracts and from partnerships with public and private organisations. Eighteen per cent of our funding is received from the UK government.
About FutureLearn
‘Pioneering the best social learning experiences for everyone anywhere’
Founded by The Open University in 2012, FutureLearn is a social learning platform, designed to support learning through conversation. It offers 5.7 million learners free online courses from world-leading UK and international universities, centres of research excellence and specialist education providers like the British Council, Creative Skillset and European Space Agency. FutureLearn is an international platform with over 75% of its users based outside of the UK.
About UCL Institute of Education
UCL Institute of Education (IOE) is a world-leading centre for research and teaching in education and social science.
Ranked number one for education worldwide in the 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 QS World University Rankings, the IOE was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2016. In 2014, the Institute secured ‘outstanding’ grades from Ofsted on every criterion for its initial teacher training, across primary, secondary and further education programmes. In the most recent Research Excellence Framework assessment of university research, the IOE was top for ‘research power’ (GPA multiplied by the size of the entry) in education. Founded in 1902, the Institute currently has more than 8,000 students and 800 staff. In December 2014 it became a single-faculty school of UCL, called the UCL Institute of Education (IOE).
Our research addresses society’s most important challenges and our teaching inspires our students by providing them with first-hand experience of leading-edge research and knowledge creation. We play an important global role, contributing to international academic and policy-related arenas and networks developing the fields of education and social science worldwide.
